Well played, Intel. The 320 with the enhanced data loss protection is now more expensive than the 520 which lack it, and the much cheaper 330.

At least the 320 is still available, but at €1.45/GB, I'd rather get the 520 (€1.22/GB) or 330 (€1.02/GB), too bad they are not an option for servers. I was worried the 710 (€3.60/GB) would become the only option...

So, I bought this when you linked it, but received an email saying demand has caused it to be back ordered. Anyone know if they'll honor the MiR? The one linked from Tiger says within 30 days of "purchase". I hope they'd consider delivery in there, too.

So, I bought this when you linked it, but received an email saying demand has caused it to be back ordered. Anyone know if they'll honor the MiR? The one linked from Tiger says within 30 days of "purchase". I hope they'd consider delivery in there, too.

Until your credit card/payment of choice is billed, the purchase transaction isn't complete. I don't think Tiger are going to split hairs over it.

So, I bought this when you linked it, but received an email saying demand has caused it to be back ordered. Anyone know if they'll honor the MiR? The one linked from Tiger says within 30 days of "purchase". I hope they'd consider delivery in there, too.

Until your credit card/payment of choice is billed, the purchase transaction isn't complete. I don't think Tiger are going to split hairs over it.

Happily, I got another email today that it's being shipped. That's a lot better than the 4 week back order I originally had.

I saw an article (can't remember where off-hand, and I'm too slow of a connection at the moment to search) that said that the big SSD makers are allegedly starting a price war to drive the smaller companies out of the market, both to reduce competition and to prevent shoddy off-brands from tarnishing the SSD image. Of course, the article listed OCZ as one of the big makers trying to protect said image, so I take the whole thing with a grain of salt...

Received my Force3 yesterday. Going to load up Clonezilla and swap out my Vertex Plus (which goes in the crappy not doing anything but crunching SETI pc).

My board is only SATA 2 (first gen core i7 920 Asus P6T deluxe), not looking to upgrade until maybe the second set of Ivy bridge come out. Think it's worth it to get a cheap (Highpoint, etc) Sata 3 controller for the extra performance?

If Crucial is dropping the prices, my guess is this means that their successor drive is very near. Marvell announced their new chip a month or so ago, so this seems like the right time for them to start clearing out the old stuff and announcing the new.

According to OCZ's internal testing, sequential write speeds for the 128GB Vertex 4 are boosted from 200MB/s to 420MB/s by the new firmware, while read speeds get a smaller jump from 535MB/s to 550MB/s. The 256GB model, meanwhile, goes from 380MB/s sequential write to 465MB/s with the same read performance as its smaller brother.

OCZ really need to design a non-destructive firmware updater that works for boot drives. How stupid is this...

Quote:

The new firmware can be downloaded from the OCZ website. As with OCZ's other firmware updates, the upgrade is only available from Windows and while the SSD is connected as a non-boot device. It's also a destructive update, so be sure to back up your data before proceeding with the upgrade. (Source)

My problems trying to buy hardware from Newegg earlier this year (combined with pictures and anecdotes like LimpBagel's) have confirmed my stance of never giving money to Newegg again.

I bought three whole computer builds entirely from Amazon and had no problems whatsoever with any of the parts.(when I have had to return stuff in the past, they've always been awesomely accommodating)

1.)For more HDD storage sizes with SSD speeds, SRT is awesome.We used the 128gb M4 for Intel SRT in conjunction with 1TB WD Caviar Black drives. Because we mostly use our PC's for gaming (or gaming and artwork, in the case of my wife), the 128gb wasn't going to be useful as storage, since even a partial install of our Steam folders would fill up the drive. Similarly, using it as a boot drive wouldn't really accomplish anything except to make reboots a little faster. SRT, on the other hand, gives us many of the benefits of SSD, but with the size (and price) of a traditional 7200rpm hard drive. We split the drives into two segments, using 64gb for SRT (the maximum you can use) and the other 64gb to hold our Blizzard games (World of Warcraft, Starcraft II and Diablo III). This seems to work well for our purposes, plus our boot times and hard drive temperatures are significantly reduced thanks to caching.

2.)SRT requires a bit of pre-planning to implement.The downside is that if you are adding the drive to an existing system, you have to set up your SATA controller as RAID (rather than IDE or AHCI), which necessitates reformatting the drive and reinstalling Windows. Fortunately, as these were new builds, we had already set up our systems this way. The SRT Setup Article at HardwareSecrets is very handy.

3.)If you need to stick the 2.5" SSD drive in a 3.5" bay, you will need an adapter bracket.DO NOT buy the OCZ 2.5" adapter plate. It uses a unique (and smaller) screw size that is incompatible with standard rail systems. When I ordered ours, I ordered one of the OCZ brackets and two Mushkin 2.5" adapter plates, because there were only two of the less-expensive Mushkins in stock. The Mushkins installed flawlessly into our NZXT Gamma Classic cases using the rails that came with the case. The OCZ, on the other hand, wouldn't attach to the rails because the screw holes were too small. So I popped the securing rivets out of the rails, intending to use them with the screws OCZ included with their bracket. Only the screws were barely too short to reach the bracket after going through the rail. I had to file the rail down and remove the rubber vibration suppressors from around the holes (not really needed for an SSD, but still). It was a hell of a lot more work, and the OCZ bracket is almost twice as expensive as the Mushkin. So whatever you do, DO NOT buy the OCZ bracket. They suck almost as bad as their drives.

So those are the lessons I took away from my mostly painless SSD installation / SRT implementation.The speed boost is nice, and the reduced temperatures (and noise, and presumably wear-and-tear) is a fantastic bonus.Highly recommended.